Saying yes, I know you always wanted a friend to play tea party with instead of dolls

I really NEED touch at this point in my life, just like I need food or water. I don't know if it's like a part of me that was first cleaned is now ready to grow, and it's like a missing vitamin or enzyme. The process won't complete and it's sometimes annoying or painful.

It's kind of strange, culturally, to acknowledge being in this situation, I think it requires a depth of maturity that makes a lot of people uncomfortable.

I don't know how to properly express myself sometimes, I feel stunted, like I'm closed off, not allowed by society to go and express how I feel, or like I have to hide myself. I'm renting an apartment in a giant house, and my neighbor on the other side of the floor is inside all the time. He's an older man with lots of health problems. He never comes outside. There's just this wall between our living spaces, but it's not like I can really go outside, bang on his door and be like, "Hey! I'm MMM! I live next door! Can we talk? Do you ever feel lonely? I technically live right beside you, but I have no idea who you are!" The atomization inherent in society...

Get a pet!! Get a pet!! I understand the ethical questions you must be asking, but a pet will enrich your life, AND YOU WILL ENRICH ITS LIFE in return!! GET A PET!!

Anaclitic Therapy With LSD (LSD Analysis)

The term anaclitic (from the Greek anaklinein--to lean upon) refers to various early infantile needs and tendencies directed toward a pregenital love object. This method was developed by two London psychoanalysts, Joyce Martin and Pauline McCririck. It is based on clinical observations of deep age regression occuring in LSD sessions of psychiatric patients. During these periods many of them relive episodes of early infantile frustration and emotional deprivation. This is typically associated with agonizing cravings for love, physical contact, and other instinctual needs experienced on a very primitive level.

The technique of LSD therapy practiced by Martin and McCririck was based on psychoanalytic understanding and interpretation of all the situations and experiences occurring in drug sessions and in this sense is very close to psycholytic approaches. The critical difference distinguishing this therapy from any other was the element of direct satisfaction of anaclitic needs of the patients. In contrast to the traditional detached attitude characteristic of psychoanalysis and psycholytic treatment, Martin and McCririck assumed an active mothering role and entered into close physical contact with their patients to help them to satisfy primitive infantile needs reactivated by the drug.

More superficial aspects of this approach involve holding the patients and feeding them warm milk from a bottle, caressing and offering reassuring touches, holding their heads in one's lap, or hugging and rocking. The extreme of psychodramatic involvement of the therapist is the so-called "fusion technique", which consists of full body contact with the client. The patient lies on the couch covered with a blanket and the therapist lies beside his or her body, in close embrace, usually simulating the gentle comforting movements of a mother caressing her baby.

The subjective reports of patients about these periods of "fusion" with the therapist are quite remarkable. They describe authentic feelings of symbiotic union with the nourishing mother image, experienced simultaneously on the level of the "good breast" and "good womb". In this state, patients can experience themselves as infants receiving love and nourishment at the breast of the nursing mother and at the same time feel totally identified with a fetus in the oceanic paradise of the womb. This state can simultaneously involve archetypal dimensions and elements of mystical rapture, and the above situations be experienced as contact with the Great Mother or Mother Nature. It is not uncommon that the deepest form of this experience involves feelings of oneness with the entire cosmos and the ultimate creative principle, or God.

The fusion technique seems to provide an important channel between the psychodynamic, biographical level of the LSD experience and the transcendental states of consciousness. Patients in anaclitic therapy relate that during their nourishing exchange with the mother image, the milk seemed to be "coming directly from the Milky Way." In the imaginary re-enactment of the placentary circulation the life-giving blood can be experienced as sacramental communion, not only with the material organism, but with the divine source. Repeatedly, the situations of "fusion" have been described in all their psychological and spiritual ramifications as fulfillment of the deepest needs of human nature, and as extremely healing experiences. Some patients described this technique as offering the possibility of a retroactive intervention in their deprived childhood. When the original traumatic situations from childhood become reenacted in all their relevance and complexity with the help of the "psychedelic time-machine," the therapist's affection and loving care can fill the vacuum caused by deprivation and frustration.

The dosages used in this treatment technique ranged between 100 and 200 micrograms of LSD, sometimes with the addition of Ritalin in later hours of the sessions. Martin and McCririck described good and relatively rapidly achieved results in patients with deep neuroses or borderline psychotic disorders who had experienced severe emotional deprivation in childhood. Their papers, presentations at scientific meetings, and a film documenting the anaclitic technique stirred up an enormous amount of interest among LSD therapists and generated a great deal of fierce controversy. The reactions of colleagues to this treatment modality ranged from admiration and enthusiasm to total condemnation. Since most of the criticism from the psychoanalytically oriented therapists revolved around the violation of the psychoanalytic taboo against touching and the possible detrimental consequences of the fusion technique for transference-countertransference problems, it is interesting to describe the authors' response to this serious objection.

Both Martin and McCririck seemed to concur that they had experienced much more difficulty with transference relationships before they started using the fusion technique. According to them, it is the lack of fulfillment in the conventional therapeutic relationship that foments and perpetuates transference. The original traumatic situations are continuously reenacted in the therapeutic relationship and the patient essentially experiences repetitions of the old painful rejections. When the anaclitic needs are satisfied in the state of deep regression induced by the drug, the patients are capable of detaching themselves emotionally from the therapist and look for more appropriate objects in their real life.

This situation has a parallel in the early developmental history of the individual. Those children whose infantile emotional needs were adequately met and satisfied by their parents find it relatively easy to give up the affective ties to their family and develop independent existence. By comparison, those individuals who experienced emotional deprivation and frustration in childhood tend to get trapped during their adult life in symbiotic patterns of interaction, destructive and self-destructive clinging behavior, and life-long problems with dependence-independence. According to Martin and McCririck, the critical issue in anaclitic therapy is to use the fusion technique only during periods of deep regression, and keep the experience strictly on the pregenital level. It should not be used in the termination periods of the sessions when the anaclitic elements could get easily confused with adult sexual patterns.

The anaclitic technique never achieved wide acceptance; its use seemed to be closely related to unique personalities characteristics of its authors. Most other therapists, particularly males, found it emotionally difficult and uncomfortable to enter into the intimate situation of fusion with their clients. However, the importance of physical contact in LSD psychotherapy is unquestionable and many therapists have routinely used various less-intense forms of body contact.

The farmer in the dell
The farmer in the dell
Hi-ho, the derry-o
The farmer in the dell

The farmer takes a wife
The farmer takes a wife
Hi-ho, the derry-o
The farmer takes a wife

The wife takes a child (2x)
Hi-ho, the derry-o
The wife takes a child

The child takes a nurse (2x) . . .
The nurse takes a cow (2x) . . .
The cow takes a dog (2x) . . .
The dog takes a cat (2x) . . .
The cat takes a rat (2x) . . .
The rat takes the cheese (2x) . . .

The cheese stands alone
The cheese stands alone
Hi-Ho, the derry-o
The cheese stands alone

The players form a circle holding hands around one who is designated as the farmer, singing the first verse while moving around. When the verse is over they stop and the farmer makes his choice of a wife (sometimes without looking). The wife joins him in the center for her verse and so through the verses until either or the cheese or dog is selected or only one person is left to become the last character. They usually become the farmer for the next round.